Tidal Rip

citizen. So it would hardly serve to incense the Argentine people, and therefore would not help the fascists much.”

“I have to agree,” Jeffrey said.

“Yet to detonate the bomb on an Argentine military facility, or on a major Argentine urban center, while certainly making Brazil look like a great villain, also does terrible harm to the Argentine fascists themselves and to their supporters…. Most of the population of that country is concentrated right around Buenos Aires. The fascists might wish to dispose of the shantytowns, or of the Jewish quarter, but to use a nuclear bomb would do massive damage to other people and establishments the fascists would want to protect. And again, it raises the problem of credibility for the entire ruse. Why would Brazil want to kill people in Argentina who oppose the fascists?”

Jeffrey saw that da Gama was making very telling points. He began to wonder himself if he and his superiors had misjudged the entire basis of Axis intent, and began as well to better understand how da Gama had earned his reputation as a charismatic and spellbinding orator and debater. Da Gama also displayed his trademark combination of working-class pragmatism and ex-army skills as organizer and administrator. No one could have poked holes in the American arguments with greater clarity or fewer words.

But Jeffrey was utterly convinced of his own position. He knew the von Scheer was out there.

“I don’t want to put you on the spot unfairly, Captain,” da Gama said. “I have no doubt that Argentina verges on a fascist coup. I have no doubt they would welcome support from the Axis. And I don’t question that an attack by them from the south would be a distraction and a nuisance to Brazil. But they couldn’t possibly defeat us, given the correlation of forces and the distances involved and the mounting logistic difficulties for them as they advanced.”

“Sir, that’s just it. If the Argentines had atomic weapons, the correlation of forces would be very different, wouldn’t it?”

Da Gama frowned. “Yes.”

“And a fabricated provocation of some kind, as an excuse for Germany to give the Argentines a supply of such weapons, would be consistent with their history. German history.”

Da Gama nodded. “The Nazis dressed concentration-camp inmates in Polish Army uniforms, then shot them outside a German radio station on the border. They said, ‘See, Poland has attacked us.’ Then they invaded Poland. Yes, it’s in every history book…. But that was many years ago. Andthe current regime in Germany aren’t Nazis.”

Mr. Jones cleared his throat. “We seem to be at an impasse.”

“The impasse may be irrelevant,” da Gama said. “Captain Fuller, if we come right to the point, assume von Scheer and the latest German plot are real, what would you have us do that we aren’t already doing?”

“Warn your people and evacuate main cities.”

“And cause tremendous panic while attempting something that our own computer modeling and traffic analysts have shown cannot be done?”

“Sir?”

“The people living in and around Rio de Janeiro, and our business and commercial center in Sao Paulo, and the new capital city Brasilia, total close to fifty million. The best roads in the whole country connect these three cities only to one another. How do we evacuate fifty million people? Where do we send them?”

“What about the trans-Amazonian highway?”

“Largely a daydream from our era of dictatorships. Hardly comparable as a civil defense asset to America’s interstate system, or as a military conduit network to Hitler’s Autobahn. Parts of this so-called highway through the Amazon are nothing but mud holes in the rainy season; they aren’t even paved. And many paved parts get washed out every time the Amazon floods, which it does each year as part of the normal seasonal cycle…. Please, Captain, be realistic.”

“Then the only option, Mr. President, is interdiction.”

“Captain?”

“Help us interdict the Germans when they try to bring the atom bomb ashore.”

“How much more help can we give? Do you think we don’t know that half of the tankers sent to refuel your AWACS in midair are really electronic warfare reconnaissance planes? And that your AWACS aircraft’s orbit is suspiciously close to the Argentine border? Not to mention, shall we say, today’s varied naval activities?… To work directly on Argentine soil, or in their territorial waters, would constitute an invasion itself, an act of war. We’d start the very thing we all seek to avoid.”

Jeffrey glanced again at Jones and Stewart and saw that neither man had anything to say. Figuring he held the momentum himself, he kept talking.

“Give us permission, Mr. President, to stage our assets from your soil. More sophisticated reconnaissance drones of our own and Special Forces.”

“For what purpose?”

“To be better poised to halt the German detonation of an American atom bomb. It’s only fair we be allowed to reclaim our dangerous stolen property. Our transterritorial right of hot pursuit.”

“You would cross the border into Argentina yourselves, staging from Brazil?”

“It’s the least evil of the unattractive choices available, sir.”

“How will you even track this warhead? Don’t tell me your AWACS or your ECM planes or drones can see a shielded tactical nuclear warhead from such a vast distance away. The Atlantic coast of Argentina is fifteen hundred miles long!”

“Sir, I’m honestly not aware of our true capabilities there. I do know my superiors believe such staging access, if you grant it, could make some difference.”

Mr. Jones cleared his throat. “I think I can add something here.”

Everyone turned. Jones took an object from his pocket and put it on the conference table.

“What is that?” da Gama said.

The Brazilian generals passed it to their president.

Da Gama looked at it. “This is a bottle cap?”

“Mr. President,” Jones said, “how often have you walked by one of those on the sidewalk and paid it no mind? Ignored it altogether? Not even noticed it?”

“Why, I don’t know. There must be millions of bottle caps strewn everywhere each day.” South American bottling companies used and reused glass much more than aluminum cans.

“Precisely,” Jones said. “Only this isn’t really a bottle cap.”

“What is it?” Da Gama turned it over in his hand.

“It’s a gamma-ray detector. With a built-in radio transmitter. The microbattery is recharged daily by solar power.”

“And…?”

“These have been strewn, as you put it, sir, all around the waterfront of Mar del Plata, and Buenos Aires, and other ports of possible infiltration into Argentina such as Bahia Blanca farther south.”

“I’m impressed,” da Gama said.

“Can I see?” Jeffrey asked.

Da Gama slid the bottle cap along the table. Jeffrey looked at it carefully. Probably has a loop antenna built into the rim. “What’s the range of the radio link when this thing decides to sound the alarm?”

“I don’t know,” Jones said. “That’s above my clearance level.”

“Mr. President,” Jeffrey said. “Everyone. I think the way to break our impasse is to stop thinking in terms of certainties when we face so many unknowns. We need instead to consider scenarios. One possible scenario is the one we’ve all described, that the von Scheer is real and close and will deliver an American warhead, intending to detonate it as the excuse to then present German warheads to Argentina.”

Da Gama looked at Jeffrey. “Have you considered, Captain, that this whole train of thought we’ve been following is a very clever Axis trick to dupe us all and have us do their work for them? That, in fact, the Germans want us to think just this, and then an American incursion on either Brazilian or Argentine territory presents the